Numbers 14:40

14:40 And early ¹  in the morning they went up to the crest of the hill country, ²  saying, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place that the Lord commanded, ³  for we have sinned.” ⁴ 

Genesis 14:10

14:10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. ⁵  When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, ⁶  but some survivors ⁷  fled to the hills. ⁸ 

Deuteronomy 1:44

1:44 The Amorite inhabitants of that area ⁹  confronted ¹⁰  you and chased you like a swarm of bees, striking you down from Seir as far as Hormah. ¹¹ 

Jude 1:9

1:9 But even ¹²  when Michael the archangel ¹³  was arguing with the devil and debating with him ¹⁴  concerning Moses’ body, he did not dare to bring a slanderous judgment, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”

Jude 1:19

1:19 These people are divisive, ¹⁵  worldly, ¹⁶  devoid of the Spirit. ¹⁷ 

¹ tn The verb וַיַּשְׁכִּמוּ (vayyashkimu) is often found in a verbal hendiadys construction: “They rose early…and they went up” means “they went up early.”

² tn The Hebrew text says literally “the top of the hill,” but judging from the location and the terrain it probably means the heights of the hill country.

³ tn The verb is simply “said,” but it means the place that the Lord said to go up to in order to fight.

⁴ sn Their sin was unbelief. They could have gone and conquered the area if they had trusted the Lord for their victory. They did not, and so they were condemned to perish in the wilderness. Now, thinking that by going they can undo all that, they plan to go. But this is also disobedience, for the Lord said they would not now take the land, and yet they think they can. Here is their second sin, presumption.

⁵ tn Heb “Now the Valley of Siddim [was] pits, pits of tar.” This parenthetical disjunctive clause emphasizes the abundance of tar pits in the area through repetition of the noun “pits.”

⁶ tn Or “they were defeated there.” After a verb of motion the Hebrew particle שָׁם (sham) with the directional heh (שָׁמָּה, shammah) can mean “into it, therein” (BDB 1027 s.v. שָׁם).

⁷ tn Heb “the rest.”

⁸ sn The reference to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah must mean the kings along with their armies. Most of them were defeated in the valley, but some of them escaped to the hills.

⁹ tn Heb “in that hill country,” repeating the end of v. 43.

¹⁰ tn Heb “came out to meet.”

¹¹ sn Hormah is probably Khirbet el-Meshash, 5.5 mi (9 km) west of Arad and 7.5 mi (12 km) SE of Beer Sheba. Its name is a derivative of the verb חָרָם (kharam, “to ban; to exterminate”). See Num 21:3.

¹² tn The word “even” is not in Greek; it is implied by the height of the contrast.

¹³ sn According to Jewish intertestamental literature (such as 1 En. 20), Michael was one of seven archangels.

¹⁴ tn The sentence structure is a bit different in Greek. Literally it reads: “But Michael the archangel, when arguing with the devil and disputing.”

¹⁵ tn Grk “these are the ones who cause divisions.”

¹⁶ tn Or “natural,” that is, living on the level of instincts, not on a spiritual level (the same word occurs in 1 Cor 2:14 as a description of nonbelievers).

¹⁷ tn Grk “not having [the] Spirit.”